Friday, February 15, 2008

"Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces"

"Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces"
["Torture is deceptive and ineffectual."
Nicholas Eymerich, inquisitor general of the Inquisition of the Crown of Aragon; 1357-1360, 1366(?)-1381(?)]

Note: This guy was NOT a humanist! In fact, "[h]e was the first inquisitor to get around the Church's prohibition against torturing a subject twice by interpreting [the] directive very liberally, permitting a separate instance of torture for a separate charge of heresy."
[Wikipedia entry, Nicholas Eymerich]

Presumably after several years of trying to extract confessions under torture, he arrived at the now well-known conclusion:
"Torture is deceptive and ineffectual."
For what it's worth:

EVERY reputable source on the Spanish Inquisition that I've found on the web lists two forms of torture used by that august institution:
the garrucha or pulleys
and
the water-torture
... and "the water-torture" is consistently described in terms that sound identical to what we are pleased to call waterboarding.

Maybe members of W's Administration don't know it, maybe members of the Republican Party don't know it... BUT:
Waterboarding is torture!
Stop the madness!

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